RE:Vision’s Twixtor and ReelSmart Motion Blur Get 360 Support

RE:Vision Effects updated Twixtor and ReelSmart Motion Blur (RSMB) to work properly with 360-degree video, implementing new optical flow tracking that compensates for the geometry of equirectangular footage.

Essentially, Twixtor v7 and RSMB v6 now account for the wraparound nature of the frame on the left and right sides, as well as the distorted geometry of pixels along the top and bottom edges of the image. Most notably, this eliminates a visible vertical seam that would appear along the stitched edge when an equirectangular video was projected to a 360-degree sphere.

RE:Vision Demo: In this example Twixtor is used to slow down the 360 source video by a factor of five. Then a rectilinear projection is used that centers the left/right edges of the retimed 360 video.
Footage shot by Matt Silverman using a GoPro Fusion

A few other updates have been made, including: floating-point color in the Adobe Premiere Pro version; RGB+A tracking (in some versions), which supports using the alpha channel for tracking dark images with mattes; and an improved tracking option for linear footage that was previously available in some versions but has now been expanded for all hosts.

Here is the complete new features list as provided by RE:Vision:

Both RSMB and Twixtor add true 360 tracking and take into account the connectedness at the edges of the 360 video representation.

After Effects: added a feature that Twixtor will work at the composition frame rate unless otherwise specified.

Premiere Pro: RSMB and Twixtor works in floating point color.

An option is provided that uses the alpha channel to help tracking of dark images with mattes. This is especially useful for CG, masked and/or keyed material. This feature is available in the Pro versions of RSMB and Twixtor for After Effects, Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, as well as all other versions for other host programs supported.

An option for linear footage that provides better tracking. This option was provided in some versions of Twixtor and RSMB, but is now available for all hosts.

Known issue: There is ambiguity in how to represent motion vectors in 360, so RSMB Vectors does not current support true 360 blurring.

Twixtor is available for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Assimilate Scratch, Autodesk Flame and Smoke, Avid Media Composer, Blackmagic Fusion Studio, Digital Vision Nucoda, Foundry Nuke, HitFilm, Magix Vegas Pro, Natron, Silhouette, and Sony Catalyst Edit. Twixtor v7 is generally $330, with a $595 “Pro” version offered for some hosts, and discounts are available for upgrades from previous versions as well as for purchases of additional host versions.

About the Author

Bryant Frazer has been covering production and post-production technology since 1998, when he wrote about video compression and disc replication technology as the editor of DVD Report. He is the editorial director and associate publisher of StudioDaily.

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